Where Defeat Is Not An Option

Senator Romney (R, D; MA, UT…whatever and wherever, as long as I get to be in power) took a dump on President Trump as did famed Never Trumper David French. Oddly, their statements are alike in that they both claim the Mueller Report shows a horrible, lying, corrupt Trump (who didn’t do anything illegal) and who must now be opposed. A lot of people go on like that – which shows that it was clearly coordinated. The plan was clearly that Mueller would find something damaging and people like Romney and French were supposed to be part of a cascade of voices moving Trump towards resignation. It didn’t work out because of that pesky, little detail of Trump not doing anything wrong…but I guess once you’re bought, you stay bought: the people who pay for the Romneys and Frenches want this, so they get it.

Some Christian churches in Sri Lanka were blown to pieces on Easter – and just as you expected, no one who waxed eloquent over the attack on a Mosque in New Zealand is pointing out the specific, anti-Christian aspect of the attack. No one is wearing a crucifix in solidarity; no one offering up a Hail Mary. In fact, most of the people on the left saying anything about it stay away from even mentioning a Christian element. Christians are, by far, the most persecuted people in the world – and we pray for those who do evil to us…but even so, be nice if some of these cowards in the global elite would at least acknowledge what is happening.

Along with vicious attacks, the other thing we Christians expect on Easter is opinion pieces from so-called Christians which deny key aspects of the faith. I ran across one of these – you can read it if you like, but if you’ve ever read one of them, you’ve read them all. Each of them is just mindless, sophomoric drivel. But it occurred to me: why bother? I mean, its ok (in the sense that you are free to do so) to not believe that Christ’s death on the cross redeemed the world. It is ok to deny that we are in need of washing in miraculous waters. It is ok to deny that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Every Muslim, Jew, Hindu and Atheist in the world does just that…but, they also don’t try to pretend to be Christian while doing it. Why do these nitwits do it? Are they still, every so slightly, open to repentance, or are they mere emissaries of the enemy?

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33 thoughts on “Open Thread”

ClusterApril 22, 2019 / 4:39 pm

The NYT has an interesting article out today wondering if the Steele Dossier was manufactured and/or part of a Russia disinformation campaign. That’s some actual real journalism, let’s hope others follow suit. As it is now, MSNBC is acting as if the Mueller report confirms what they have been reporting for the last two years. They don’t think very highly of their audience evidently. Sadly though a large part of their audience will believe them.

AmazonaApril 22, 2019 / 4:59 pm

Yeah, wow, that’s some real journalism, all right. Maybe they are also gearing up to report that Britain is considering leaving the European Union, or that John McCain died.

If only there was someplace they could go for information on this breaking story! If only, IF ONLY, someone somewhere had dropped a hint or two about the whole dossier thing being a contrivance concocted by paid agents of the DNC and the Clinton campaign, they might—-MIGHT, I suggest—–have been able to start working on this aspect of the dossier a little earlier.

Like more than two years earlier.

I do notice that they are still desperately trying to make Russia the villain, and not Saint Hillary or the FBI

ClusterApril 22, 2019 / 5:43 pm

Isn’t it odd how Russia went from a regional power we could work with in 2012 to the almighty existential threat it is now?

M. NoonanApril 22, 2019 / 11:25 pm

That’s just part of the Left trying to dodge their way out of it – because they know if a full examination is done, lots of people are going to jail.

AmazonaApril 24, 2019 / 7:37 am

I’ve been saying this for months. My mental visual has been the gaggle of criminals—Mueller, Comey. et al—huddled together on one side of a no-man’s land protected by a minefield, and the mines have all been labeled “obstruction of justice” with the Trump DOJ knowing that trying to cross it will result in political carnage. That is why the Left so carefully constructed the image and fantasy of “obstruction of justice” in the first place—to create a deterrent to prosecuting these criminals.

If at any time during this “investigation” any charges had been leveled at any of them, within nanoseconds the howling would have commenced that Trump was only doing this to distract/punish/intimidate/obstruct.

That is why Plan B had to be constructed, to go into place the very moment the report was finally made public, a frantic effort to keep those mines in play. That is why Mueller had to litter the report with innuendo and half-baked implications. Even a cursory examination shows that even if Trump DID utter certain things, such as wishing he could move Mueller out of the way to clear the path toward actually enforcing the law and administering justice, talking about wanting to be able to do something is a long long way from actually doing it.

The Left is doing what it always does, ignoring massive inconsistencies in its eagerness and desperate need to advance a narrative. If talking about wishing he could fire Mueller is a crime, then talking about beheading the president is a crime, then talking about wishing one could kill him in any of the ways expressed by the lunatic fringe would be a crime, then wishing a ten year old boy could be molested by dozens of pedophiles is exactly the same thing as putting him in a room where this would take place. If the Left wants to eliminate the space between talking about something and doing something, then let them codify this so it can be dealt with accordingly.

Except—it is the Left constantly talking about, advocating, encouraging and promoting violence and subversion. I’d love to see something done to illustrate this, and a move, even if only in the tattered remains of actual journalism, tp suggest this might point that out.

As Congress has, under Democrat dominance, degenerated from a serious legislative body to a howling mob, maybe some bold Republicans should introduce the Thought Crime Bill, suggesting that the efforts of the Left to indict and punish people for having ideas and thoughts and even wishes counter to the ruling elites should be officially and formally criminalized so they could be dealt with in a more orderly fashion than the way they are being handled now, by flooding the nation with incendiary calls to act on issues that are not, at least not yet, actual crimes.

ClusterApril 22, 2019 / 4:50 pm

I can not think of a more vile human being than Nicole Wallace. She just said that she is “triggered” when Sarah Huckabee Sanders is at the podium because in Nicole’s opinion, Sarah debases the podium to which every panelist agreed.

MSNBC is in the process of sinking to levels never seen before or even imagined. In any other industry, every single one of the MSNBC panelists and reporters would be fired for misleading their audience over the last 2 years. They have failed their customer base.

AmazonaApril 22, 2019 / 5:00 pm

Actually, they are meeting the needs and requirements of their customer base, that tiny segment of the population which has developed a hybrid of stupidity and addiction to hatred that makes MSNBC the only place they can go for a fix.

ClusterApril 22, 2019 / 6:02 pm

At this point I hope Trump invokes Executive privilege and tells Schiff, Nadler, Waters, etc. to F**K off.

M. NoonanApril 22, 2019 / 11:24 pm

I’m interested in the case he’s bringing against the House re: their demands for his personal financial records. What possible oversight need can there be for that? The Democrats are going way too far…and for the sake of rational government, I hope Trump wins on this one.

Retired SpookApril 23, 2019 / 9:11 am

What possible oversight need can there be for that?

Read Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution and tell me what oversight power the Congress has over the Executive Branch. Here’s what Wikipedia says about Congressional oversight:

Congress’s oversight authority derives from its “implied” powers in the Constitution, public laws, and House and Senate rules. It is an integral part of the American system of checks and balances.

So, it’s not an “actual” element of the Constitution — only “implied,” kinda like abortion.

M. NoonanApril 23, 2019 / 11:35 am

I view it as the power of audit – since the Executive must come, hat in hand, to Congress for funding, part of the price of it is telling Congress what the money is being spent on. But I see no Congressional power to look into the private affairs of anyone in the Executive branch.

ClusterApril 23, 2019 / 9:11 am

Could we blame the Sri Lanka massacre on left wing brown nationalists?

MSNBC doesn’t want to rush to judgement.

AmazonaApril 24, 2019 / 7:39 am

Uh-oh—-another conundrum for the Left.

ClusterApril 23, 2019 / 9:23 am

Here’s a little something for climate alarmists:

In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

When you realize that Democrats are wrong about everything …. life is more calm.

ClusterApril 23, 2019 / 10:40 am

This is a good example of how bad our media is. The WaPo is concerned that the brown nationalists who massacred hundreds of Christians will “enrage the far right”

Glenn Reynolds points out that the whole thrust of such things is to make us ashamed and make the left enraged. It ain’t working.

AmazonaApril 24, 2019 / 8:15 am

I’m still trying to figure out just what “far right” means in nations other than the United States. Here, it only means being really REALLY dedicated to the principle that this country must be governed according to its own Constitution. So what does it mean in other countries?

In a week of a seminar dedicated to politics, in its examination of the evils of Leftist tyranny as well as the efforts of intelligence communities on both sides of the political aisle, I repeatedly asked people to explain what “right” means in the context of, say, German politics. People were baffled. I then did the same in England. No one could ever answer.. The more politically astute could define Leftism at least to some extend, but “right-wing”? A mystery, just somehow ominous and threatening to all that is good.

As far as I can tell, it is pretty much just a catch-phrase for anything or anyone the Left wants to demonize, As far as I can see, in the public narrative it is not related to actual politics, to a specific political structure, so much as a general pejorative intended to convey something sinister and evil.

I suppose one could use the term “right” to describe any political structure that is not based on tyranny but you may have noticed that lately the word “right” is invariably coupled with the adjective “far” to convey the impression that this is a description of some wild-eyed radical lunatic fringe that is, so the implication goes, dangerous.

Step back a little and look at the structure of Leftist semantic infiltration. They have co-opted the term “nationalist” and redefined it as somehow vaguely sinister, increasingly expanding its implied meaning to include racism, xenophobia and intolerance. This started with the linking of the term to the Nazis, based on the claim/theory that Germans adopted Nazism out of strong feelings of resentment at being treated badly on the world stage after WW 1 and their dedication to a sense of Germanism—because how else could you define “nationalism” in the context of how Germans felt about their national identity?—-that somehow made them eager to pursue the toxic combination of genocide and world dominance. It’s a construction that is now not even questioned, just as the claim that Nazism itself is “right-wing”.

But once the evils of the National Socialists in German were effectively moved onto the right side of the political spectrum, merely by claiming that is where they belonged but with no real political structure upon which to base this reassignment of political identity, the foundation was laid to link the term “right-wing” to pretty much anything the Left wanted or needed to demonize.

Every person who chooses to live in a country because he thinks it is the best place to live is a nationalist. It’s not a bad thing. I had a goofball starry-eyed Leftist American explain to me that in the United States the word does not just mean that, but means a belief that the entire nation must revert to a historical construction of a country dominated by white people imposing their power on those of other nationalities and skin colors.

And here we get back to the dependence of the Left on implications, to shore up, explain and justify their bigotry and pursuit of power. This person’s understanding of the word “nationalism” depended solely on accepting implied associations that simply do not exist outside the bubble of Leftist redefining of terms. I am quite sure that her understanding of the role of Congress, and the federal government in general, depends on similar implied authority, and of course the Left yearns for a Supreme Court willing to apply implied motives, powers and authorities to written law even when this demands redefining the laws themselves.

Got in a discussion with my “favorite” Liberal at the Y yesterday. In the course of the conversation he asked if I ever agreed with anyone on his side of the political spectrum about anything. I’ve been waiting for a Liberal to ask me this question. I said, yeah, I actually agree with Michelle Obama. After he picked his jaw up off the floor he asked, “in what way?” I said I agreed with Michelle that in order for the Left to fundamentally transform this country, the country needs to have a different conversation; we need to change our traditions, our history — we need to go to a different place. (pretty close paraphrase.) Then I said, the problem with doing that is people like me will resist with every fiber of our being to our dying breath — and (come on, you guys know the drill by now) WE HAVE ALL THE GUNS!! Crickets from him after that.

M. NoonanApril 23, 2019 / 11:37 am

Two Dem candidates have now called for Trump to be impeached. That is boilderplate for their base, but such things have a way of gaining a life of their own. The Democrat base has been told Trump is a traitor and they believe it. I’ve been wary of saying it, but I’m saying it more often: any removal of Trump from office will spark a civil war.

Retired SpookApril 23, 2019 / 11:49 am

I’ve been wary of saying it, but I’m saying it more often: any removal of Trump from office will spark a civil war.

Not gonna happen (the impeachment part, not the civil war part). The Democrats currently hold a 19 seat majority in the House, and there are more moderate freshman Democrats from districts that Trump won in 2016 than that. I doubt very many of them will vote for impeachment, knowing that it would likely doom them to one term. Even if by some outside chance the House Democrats could muster 218 votes for impeachment, there’s no way in hell there are 67 votes in the Senate to convict. And if it gets that far, it almost guarantees Trump’s re-election, just as it did Clinton’s.

Ryan MurphyApril 23, 2019 / 2:17 pm

If it got that far I’m not even sure they could get every democratic senator. I could easily see manchin rebelling and Doug Jones not wanting to totally obliterate any smidgeon of a chance he has at keeping his seat.

Retired SpookApril 23, 2019 / 1:01 pm

I wonder if Elizabeth Warren could pay TurboTax a royalty and borrow this ad.

AmazonaApril 24, 2019 / 8:25 am

And I wonder if Sandy is triggered by this: The sly joke of the math is just part of the deadly take-off.

ClusterApril 24, 2019 / 9:05 am

I love this

AmazonaApril 24, 2019 / 8:33 am

This spoof of AOC on The Price is Right is pretty funny.

The fact that someone had to check with Snopes to see if it really happened is even funnier.

The fact that Snopes went into a detailed analysis of the spoof is funnier yet.

My best conversations about politics were with London taxi drivers, who proved to be astute observers of political posturing. The general opinion from the cabbies is that the protestors might mean well but they are clueless, that they have made their point and should now just go home because after the first day or so they are just bullying the people of London by being obnoxious pests, that they are pathetically striving to appear relevant and important while actually doing nothing but having parties, that they should get jobs and go home, that the police are spineless wimps and that England is in a death spiral. As for the posturing of Emma Thompson, they have nothing but contempt.

The London papers are not kind to the protesters, but the BBC comment on them, shown on the news feed on the plane on the way home, only interviewed a couple of people who (seriously) looked like they were auditioning for the parts of brainwashed puppets. If they were in a movie about brainwashed puppet people it would be panned for being so unbelievable, the wide-eyed braindead yammering about how special it was to be part of something so important. “It’s about time we did something” was a theme, overlooking the fact that none of them were doing anything at all but increasing pollution by forcing people to drive to work because public transport was blocked, increasing pollution by forcing cars to sit idling at blockages of the roads and making utter fools of themselves. They desperately wanted violence, for the ability to show some twit with blood running down his face, but the police refused to give them what they wanted. I forgot to get a copy of the Daily Mail that had a scathing full page article on the Left and its schemes, but I’ll keep looking to see if it is posted online. It would help if I could remember the name of the author.

On Sunday thousands were openly smoking pot in Hyde Park but the police were not arresting anyone, just fretting that if they got too stoned they might get sunburned. No, YCMTSU.

Tuesday was Saint George’s Day, once a national holiday celebrated with parades and bands and music. No longer, at least in London, because it might offend someone. Once the streets would have been lined with British flags and there would have been a huge parade, but that is part of their history and culture erased by political correctness and the rule of the mob.

M. NoonanApril 24, 2019 / 11:32 am

The erasure is part of the plan – its why they keep coming up with absurd theories that some non-Western person invented everything before some white a**hole came along and stole it (hundreds of years later, having never hear of the non-Westerner, who apparently never did anything with his clever invention). 100 years from now, if the Left wins, it will be very much like 1984: all bad things were done by an amorphous “white people” who caused all problems until the Left came along and saved everyone and invented everything.

AmazonaApril 24, 2019 / 7:36 pm

This is why the Internet is such a mixed blessing for the Left. On one hand, it gives them a massive propaganda tool, and allows dissemination of lies on a much grander scale than in the old days, but it also makes it harder to rewrite history. Though there has been some purging of content. (When Obama came on the scene with his much-touted Certificate of Live Birth I looked up the Hawaiian statute, and its subtitle was “for people born out of the state”. After it was questioned as a legitimate proof of where he was born, the online version of the statute had that subtitle removed. I imagine there are some people who can dig out stuff that has been purged, but I also imagine that there are people skilled enough to make it permanent.)

But the Left has always been about rewriting history, and we have seen them busy at it already here—the school history books are laughable inventions that have nothing to do with what really happened, the Smithsonian tried to put on an exhibit of the atom bomb stating that Pearl Harbor was a wholly justified act of self defense, etc.

AmazonaApril 25, 2019 / 10:42 am

The problem with this effort to rewrite history, aside from its core dishonesty, is the simple fact that even IF some “person of color” DID initiate the scientific, artistic and/or industrial ideas that have moved the world into unprecedented economic prosperity, scientific advancement and artistic genius, it all stopped right there at the inception without having a bunch of Westerners step in to pick up the ball and run with it.

ClusterApril 24, 2019 / 9:06 am

Just another day in Phoenix:

PHOENIX — A recent fatal shootout between federal officers in Arizona and a suspected migrant smuggler packing an AK-47 has provided a glimpse inside the brutal tactics of traffickers who sometimes prey on recent border-crossers, even holding them against their will to shake down their families.